As you can see in my question, I have tried 1) and 2). I don't want to install any third party apps to make this work. I know it worked before and it should work now.
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mandaraOct 19 '12 at 15:59

Can you try uninstall and re-install it or adding it as a crontab and see if that helps.
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PaddingtonOct 20 '12 at 12:04

I tried that and didn't work. Adding it in crontab is same as adding it to Startup Applications. I wanted to enable this background running because of the faster startup time. I guess I will just keep it running minimized.
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mandaraOct 20 '12 at 16:16